Produced by David Widger EXEMPTING THE CHURCHES An Argument for the Abolition of This Unjust and Unconstitutional Practice By James F. Morton. Jr. "No person shall be required to support any ministry or place of worship against his consent"--The accepted American principle. "To relieve the property of a church from taxation is to appropriate money, to the extent of that tax, for the support of that church.... To exempt the church from taxation is to pay a part of the priest's salary."--Ingersoll. 1916. EXEMPTING THE CHURCHES AN ARGUMENT FOR THE ABOLITION OF THIS UNJUST AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL PRACTICE. The history of the democratic spirit, from its first inception to the present day, is that of a ceaseless struggle with special privilege. The principle of caste, in its numerous manifestations, is constantly at war with the right's of man. After centuries of incessant conflict, the advance of democracy is beyond all question; and its ultimate triumph can be denied only by those who hold that progress is destined to cease and civilization to decay. It has become evident that what is democratic is good and beneficial to mankind, that what is undemocratic is evil and harmful to the human race. Kings, kaisers, emperors, czars, hereditary aristocracies and oligarchies of every kind, however necessary or useful factors they may have been in certain early stages of the transition from barbarism to civilization, are now recognizable as drags on the chariot wheel of progress. The world has begun to rid itself of all these anachronisms; and the day of their entire and permanent disappearance can now be foreseen in the not extremely distant future. Complete autocracies have practically ceased to exist. Monarchy by divine right is recognized for the monstrous lie which it always was; and the few atavistic survivals who continue to mouth that once revered phrase are abhorred, pitied or despised by all sane men and women. Mixed governments are the general rule, since the old and exploded fallacies of personal government yield unwillingly to the march of progress and justice; but in each case the authority is slowly but surely passing more and more into the hands of the people; and the hereditary rulers are becoming mere figureheads or subsidiary agents of popular government, pending their final disappearance. In our own and a few other lands, we are happily rid of them long since, and we wish the same good fortune at an early date to the rest of the nations. The reactionaries of the different countries vainly declare that democratic triumph is a sign of degeneracy. On the contrary, where democracy flourishes, all forms of progress are found to thrive best. Each new step in the direction of human liberty has been bitterly opposed by the worshipers of the past. They have poured forth eloquent jeremiads, and vehemently predicted the collapse of society and the deterioration of the race, whenever religious liberty, freedom of the press or of